Reading Assessment: The Nuclear Family in North America

Reading Assessment

Background

Teachers give a student a reading assessment in order to see the student's reading level at the beginning of the quarter.

Instructions

Read the text below, then answer the comprehension questions. The instructor will use your answers to decide what you need to practice to improve your reading skill.

The Nuclear Family in North America

The structure of a family takes different forms in different places around the world and even in different groups with a society. The family’s form changes as it adapts to changing social and economic influences.

Until recently, the most common form in North America was the nuclear family. That family form consisted of a married couple with their young children. The nuclear family is an independent group. It must be prepared to protect and take care of itself. Individual family members strongly depend on one another. There is little help from outside the family in emergencies.

Elderly relatives of a nuclear family are cared for only if it is possible for the family to care for them. In North America,  elderly people often do not live with the family; they live in retirement communities and nursing homes. In other parts of the world, it is more common that elder relatives live with the family.

There are many parallels between the nuclear family in industrial societies and the families in societies that live in harsh environments, such as the historical Inuit native people of Alaska and Canada. The nuclear family structure is well adapted to a life of mobility. In tough weather and environments, mobility allows the family to hunt for food. For North Americans, the hunt for jobs and improved social status also requires mobility.

The nuclear family was not always common in North America. In a more agricultural time, the small nuclear family was usually part of a larger family of grandparents, mother and father, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins. In North America today, there is a dramatic rise in the number of households with newer family forms, like foster parents, single parents, gay, lesbian, and queer parents, and multi-generational families. About two thirds (2/3) of all households in the United States are headed by divorced, separated, or never married individuals. The structure of the family, not just in North America, but throughout the world, continues to change as it adapts to changing conditions.

Source: adapted from Readings in the Content Areas. Columbus, Ohio. 2005. McGraw Hill.